Researchers from the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) in Australia
believe that salt tolerant plants may be the key to sustainable global food
production. In an opinion paper published in Trends in Plant Sciences,
Sergey Shabala, Jayakumar Bose and Rainer Hedrich propose a new concept for
breeding salt-tolerant plants that will help attain sustainable food
production.

Shabala said, "We suggest that we should learn from nature and do what
halophytes, or naturally salt-loving plants, are doing: taking up salt but
depositing it in a safe place-external balloon-like structures on the leaf
surface called salt bladders." Shabala and his colleagues suggest the
possibility of modifying genes in traditional crops such as wheat and rice
to allow them to develop salt bladders. The research team believes that one
may be able to grow external salt depots on any crop, and could add a new
and very promising dimension to breeding salt tolerant crops.


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